Monday, June 19, 2017

Protestant Churches Now Outnumber Russian Orthodox Ones in Kazakhstan

Paul
Goble

Staunton, June 16 – The religious
activity of people is seldom best captured by statistics, but some aspects of religious
life, including the number of religious organizations and even the ones that a
government or other organization uses to categorize them can nonetheless
provide important details about this aspect of social life.

A new article on the Regnum news
agency provides comprehensive data on the numbers of various religious
denominations in Kazakhstan in 2011 before Astana adopted its current law on
religion and now, almost six years after it did so. They are extremely
instructive about developments and especially state policy there (regnum.ru/news/society/2288695.html).

“In 2011,” the article reports, “32
confessions and more than 20 denominations were registered in Kazakhstan. They
formed a total of 4430 religious groups, 3839 of which were registered as legal
persons or branches and 559 as small groups.Together, they used 3369 religious facilities.”The list also includes the number of small,
missionary-led groups.

At the end of that year, Kazakhstan
adopted a new law on religious organizations at least partially in response to
a number of terrorist acts there.The
state tightened its restrictions on religious life. Among the results achieved
in 2012, the Regnum article reports, were the following:

The number of religious
organizations and the number of confessions declined to 3088 and 17
respectively. The Old Believers and the Armenian Apostolic Church were folded
into the Orthodox category. Protestant denominations were reregistered with
their number falling from 666 to 462, Charismatics from 48 to 16, and the
Scientologists entirely liquidated.

But almost immediately, the number
of organizations in each category began expanding again. According to a survey
taken at the end of April 2017 by the Kazakhstan religious affairs and civil society
ministry, there are now 3679 religious organizations (2570 Muslim, 333
Orthodox, 85 Catholic, 668 Protestant, seven Jewish, and 17 others.

What is most striking is that the
Protestant now outnumber the Russian Orthodox by more than two to one.

Last October, the same ministry
published figures on the number of religious buildings in the country. At that
time, there were 3436 “cult” facilities, including 2528 mosques, 294 Orthodox
churches, 108 Catholic churches, 490 Protestant facilities, seven synagogues,
two Buddhist shrines, three Krishna consciousness centers, and four Bahai
houses.

At present, Regnum says, there are
495 missionaries in Kazakhstan, 238 of whom are Catholics, 175 Protestants, and
87 Orthodox.